The market for software-as-a-service (SaaS) has gained popularity in France and around the world. With SaaS, businesses provide customers with software that is hosted in the cloud and accessible online.

SaaS publishers who want to stand out from the competition must be intentional with their marketing. This includes designing careful, effective marketing strategies to attract customers and ensure sustainable growth. In this article, we present some helpful tools and strategies for SaaS marketing and explain how Stripe can help.

Key takeaways

• SaaS marketing refers to a variety of methods and strategies that businesses use to increase purchases of SaaS products, which are usually sold by subscription.
  
• It includes acquiring prospective customers, promoting SaaS, and retaining subscribers.
  
• Before deciding on a SaaS marketing strategy, a business must first identify its goals, target market, and budget.
  
• Some effective SaaS marketing strategies include social media, brand awareness, organic search engine optimization (SEO), paid advertising, transparent pricing, and free trials.
  
• To measure a strategy’s effectiveness, analyze the following key performance indicators (KPIs): number of unique users, cost of client acquisition, client lifetime value, attrition rate, and recurring revenue.
  
• Some SaaS brands with successful marketing strategies include Payfit, Trello, Zapier, and Ahrefs.
  

What is SaaS marketing?

SaaS marketing is any strategy that a business uses to promote the sale of software hosted in the cloud. SaaS digital marketing strategies—from organic search engine optimization (SEO) to paid advertising and free trials—are designed to attract, convert, and retain clients over the long term.

One primary goal of SaaS marketing is to build a base of loyal customers who renew their subscriptions, resulting in recurring revenue for the business and greater profitability.

What are the differences between SaaS marketing and traditional marketing?

SaaS products rely on subscription models. Customers can cancel their contracts at any time, making it important for businesses to prioritize customer retention, loyalty, and support. SaaS marketing focuses on acquiring new customers and retaining current subscribers. However, traditional marketing concentrates more on individual sales.

In SaaS marketing, it is important to educate clients on the continued value of the product. In traditional marketing, the focus is on a physical product’s features.

Online demonstrations and free trials can help prospects quickly see the added value of a SaaS product. This can result in shorter sales cycles than with traditional products.

What are the main phases of a SaaS digital marketing strategy?

The three main phases of a SaaS digital marketing strategy include the following:

• Acquiring prospects
  
• Promoting the product to convert prospects into paying customers
  
• Retaining customers over the long term
  

To acquire high-quality prospects, businesses must perform research, identify potential customers, and make contact. This can help generate qualified leads, instead of unqualified individuals or businesses.

To promote SaaS products, businesses must educate the market and demonstrate the value of the products. It’s important to help the target audience understand how this SaaS solution solves their problems.

Retaining subscribers is another important part of SaaS marketing. To be successful, businesses must offer frictionless checkout, useful and up-to-date products, and robust customer support. Personalized assistance is important for establishing trust with subscribers. Businesses can also consider continually upgrading products or offering discounts on additional features.

Considerations before designing a SaaS marketing strategy

Before beginning a SaaS marketing strategy, businesses must first set sales goals, identify the target market, and establish a preliminary marketing budget. Well-defined parameters can help generate quality traffic, improve conversion, and retain customers.

Set goals

Make sure the sales and marketing teams are aligned and have the same goals. Make a list of measurable results that the business wants to attain through marketing. Bpifrance recommends setting goals for the next 12 months. These goals will serve as a guide to position the SaaS marketing strategy.

Identify the target audience

Next, describe personas or ideal customers. Who are the target customers? What are their needs, characteristics, values, and demographics? What industry do they work in? What is their level of digital maturity? What are their challenges? A well-honed SaaS digital marketing strategy requires one or more personas. The more specific the persona, the more precise the marketing.

It’s also important to decide how many qualified leads must be funneled to the sales team monthly to reach goals. Where and how will the business contact them? What sales channels will the business use?

Establish a budget

Another consideration before starting to market a SaaS product is the budget. Evaluate the business’s financial health and calculate its expected recurring revenue, including monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and annual recurring revenue (ARR). Include potential returns on investment from each marketing channel, and prioritize the most profitable ones.

For example, organic SEO can generate long-term traffic without draining the budget. On the other hand, paid advertisements offer immediate visibility but require continual investment. On average, SaaS businesses dedicate over 50% of their revenue to marketing.

Effective strategies for successful SaaS digital marketing

Top SaaS marketing strategies include brand awareness, social media presence, organic SEO, paid advertising, transparent pricing, and free trials. By combining these digital marketing strategies, businesses can maximize their visibility and potentially convert more prospects into paying customers.

Brand awareness

Customers tend to buy from brands they know. Brand awareness means increasing customer familiarity with a brand and establishing trust with prospects to make them want to subscribe to the service.

In the SaaS market, communications through social media sites such as LinkedIn are particularly effective in building brand awareness. Make unique posts that demonstrate the added value of the product and what differentiates the business from the competition. Posts can include content on best practices, new features, and industry news. These topics can position the company as a reliable, expert source in the community.

Social media presence

A strong social media presence is important for successful SaaS marketing. Be active on the platforms used by the target market, including LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and X. Post content that piques prospects’ interests and engages the community.

To increase visibility, businesses can hire developers to test and promote products on social media. They can also conduct joint interviews and invite interviewees to publish articles on their websites. Collaborating with SaaS experts can help businesses gain outside credibility and broaden reach.

SaaS content marketing

Content marketing is central to SaaS sales strategies. Its purpose is to create high-impact educational resources to attract qualified prospects and build trust with subscribers.

Businesses can post case studies and testimonials that recount how their SaaS products have solved customer problems. Content marketing can also include publishing helpful guides, infographics, blog posts, webinars, white papers, podcasts, ebooks, and video tutorials on multiple channels (e.g., websites, social media, emails) to promote action and retention. Quality content centered on real needs can convince hesitant prospects to sign up for free trials and turn current customers into loyal ones.

SEO

Businesses must refine content to achieve organic SEO. To maximize impact, businesses can produce well-written content, include key search terms, and publish regularly. Content must be specific and employ relevant keywords. This can help generate targeted organic traffic and attract and educate qualified prospects during their research phases.

Paid advertising

Organic SEO can be supplemented by paid advertising via channels such as Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Meta Ads to increase brand visibility and target customers or businesses already interested in the product. Paid advertising can quickly capture the attention of qualified prospects and speed up conversion.

Transparent price charts

French customers value pricing transparency and dislike surprise fees. Don’t hide pricing. Instead, prominently display a transparent price chart on the website, with no hidden charges. This way, customers and prospects can see subscription costs up front.

Free trials

Carefully designed free trials are powerful conversion drivers. Allow prospects to test products and explore their features. Most major SaaS businesses offer free trials, demonstrations, and tutorials to help convert prospects into loyal paying customers.

What key performance indicators (KPIs) can businesses consider for SaaS marketing strategies?

KPIs help guide SaaS marketing strategies and measure their successes. Important KPIs include the following:

• Number of unique users: How many users visited websites, content, or ads at least once in a given period
  
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC): The total marketing cost to acquire one new paying customer
  
• Customer lifetime value (CLV): The profitability of a paying customer over the long term
  
• Attrition rate: The percentage of customers who cancel their subscriptions in a given period
  
• MRR: The expected revenue generated each month by subscriptions
  

Examples of SaaS digital marketing

The following companies effectively use SaaS digital marketing strategies:

• Payfit
  This software simplifies payroll management for microbusinesses and small and medium-sized businesses. Payfit is a leading payroll SaaS that regularly publishes helpful articles and current guides to educate, engage, and attract nonexpert users. Its marketing strategy also includes online demonstrations and special offers for first-time customers.
  
• Trello
  This project management tool uses a SaaS digital marketing strategy that includes a freemium version. It allows users to try a limited version of the software, which can help accelerate conversion. Trello also publishes blog posts that are useful and relevant to its target market.
  
• Zapier
  This company’s approach is to use a thoughtful organic SEO marketing strategy with keywords that maximize its content’s success.
  
• Ahrefs
  This company uses a discounted trial to convert prospects into customers and allow users to test the software’s features before subscribing.
  

Increase your SaaS revenue with Stripe

Stripe solutions—including Stripe Payments and Stripe Billing—help SaaS businesses increase revenue and reduce attrition. Billing simplifies tax management and analyzes recurring revenue, while Payments lets you accept payments from around the world. Payments also makes it easier and cheaper to handle multiple currencies and unifies customer payments, which creates a frictionless checkout experience that is key to retaining customers.